Dearest Beulah Mae,
Hearing from you is as good as finding a bowl full of Cousin
Gloria's creamed corn on the supper table. Gloria makes her corn the
old-fashioned way: cuts them kernels off the cob with a real sharp knife,
then scrapes the cob real good with the back of a silver knife before she
wrings the cob with her very own hands to make sure she gets every last
bit of the cream. Nothing's better.
Anyway, I read your letter while I was enjoying Gloria's corn. Gotta say
that the corn started getting cold while I was puzzling over the news of
why Lizzie Lu would take herself off to spend a weekend in Spokane and
then make you eat all that funny foreign food that can't be good for a
God-fearing Christian woman from Mississippi. So don't you think that your
wailing about it comes across like melodrama.....when it comes to puffing
oneself up and making one's troubles seem bigger than they are, we all
know who takes the prize. But we won't say no more about that. Preacher
done told us what to do when we start thinking in that direction.
I ain't got time to write too much tonight. The wash is done, but the
floors ain't waxed, the cornfield ain't hoed, the goats ain't milked, and
the national budget ain't balanced (I been reading me a book on How to
Live Like a King on $50 a Week, and I figure that once I finish the book,
I'll be absolutely ready to take on telling the country how to guide the
the Gross National Projects into Insolvency and Runaway Inflation.)
I'll write you tomorrow. I got to clear up your mind about Chatty's
'taters. She didn't use her no food coloring. Them 'taters GROWED like
that and that's a fact. Chatty says she got her starts from a place in
Idaho; I just be shaking my head. I don't know what The County Agent would
say about her sending off for no 'taters in the mail! Ain't fittin; just
ain't fittin.
Keep that donut handy; it'll cushion the ride along the highways of life,
Your cousin DeDe/dede (as the spirit moves me, etc., etc., etc.)